


Last Confessions and Hopeless Loves

by Ashesintheair



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Awkward Kissing, Aziraphale is a bit of a bastard, Canon - TV, Love Confessions, M/M, Only one chair (like only one bed but more awkward), aziraphale on a throne does things to crowley's heart that he would never admit to, crowley is oblivious
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-28
Updated: 2019-06-28
Packaged: 2020-05-28 12:15:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,347
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19393936
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ashesintheair/pseuds/Ashesintheair
Summary: After the Not-Quite-End-of-the-World, the very definite end of Aziraphale and Crowley is right around the metaphorical corner. There's a little time for things that should be said. If Aziraphale can persuade Crowley to stop pining long enough to say them.“I meant that given our situation is dire, do you have anything you wanted to say to me? Anything at all? Last words, last thoughts, anything that you might want to get off your chest, so to speak?”“Angels are bastards.”Oh light of my life, companion of my heart, I simply cannot believe you think that I’m the dense one. Aziraphale managed not to say the words out loud but thought them, very loudly, in Crowley’s general direction. It didn’t make any difference of course, but it made him feel a little better. “Ahem.”“Present company excepted, of course.”





	Last Confessions and Hopeless Loves

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Aziraphale spent the long bus ride in mourning for the bookshop. Murmuring poetic elegies to himself, his face wan in the harsh electric light and his eyes occasionally glistening, he did not give much thought to where he was going or what he would do once he got there. 

Crowley’s flat was very... Crowley. Full of sharp edges and items placed apparently for effect rather than for comfort. It did not feel very much like home but home was a funny thing. A human thing. And while Aziraphale had lost the home he had made, he wasn’t going to let the home he had found out of his sight. 

He sat primly in Crowley’s only chair and watched the demon pace in a way that suggested sometimes he forgot that legs didn’t slither. 

“Would you rather sit? It is your chair,” he began. 

“No, angel. You have it,” Crowley said tersely. 

“Crowley, what’s bothering you? It’s been 6000 years,” he added. “I’m not completely oblivious. I know when something’s got under your skin.”

He gave a short bark of a laugh that had no humour in it then the twisted self pity dropped and he glanced earnestly back at the angel. “They’re going to kill you.”

“I expect so. It’s been fun, though, hasn’t it?” Aziraphale said with a wistful sigh. “And I don’t imagine Hell will be any more merciful to you.”

Crowley waved a hand, brushing the inconsequential idea of his own demise away. “They’re supposed to be angels! They’re supposed to be good! You... We saved the world...” he trailed off leaving the long diatribe that had been running through his head unsaid because he looked at Aziraphale and it knocked the breath out of him. 

The angel was perched on Crowley’s throne, bathed in the last of the sun and Crowley could not think of any painter in history who would be able to capture the sheer divinity of it. The rule of heaven had never looked so appealing and he didn’t check the open stare. 

For the first time, Aziraphale stared straight back, no blushes, no awkward ducking of his head. Crowley’s preoccupation with his fate did not pass him by, but the demon would never say a word unless he gave him a green light, so to speak. He could be respectful like that, the angel mused. Respectful to the point of poisonously bottling everything up until he was about to explode in a ball of spite and flame. And now they were going to die - truly die - and Crowley was still being... respectful. Aziraphale rolled his eyes and attempted to give him the sign he had spent several human lifetimes waiting for. 

“Did you have something you wanted to say, my dear?” he asked, raising his eyebrows slightly and leaning into the endearment more than he normally would. 

“I won’t let you die,” Crowley muttered.

“Yes, yes, I know,” Aziraphale exhaled slightly in exasperation. “I meant that given our situation is dire, do you have anything you wanted to say to me? Anything at all? Last words, last thoughts, anything that you might want to get off your chest, so to speak?”

“Angels are bastards.”

 _Oh light of my life, companion of my heart, I simply cannot believe you think that I’m the dense one._ Aziraphale managed not to say the words out loud but thought them, very loudly, in Crowley’s general direction. It didn’t make any difference of course, but it made him feel a little better. “Ahem.”

“Present company excepted, of course.”

“Of course.” Aziraphale folded his hands carefully in his lap and looked out at the sunset. “Crowley, would you like to tell me you love me or shall we leave all that pining unspoken? Unspoken is fine, if you’d prefer that. Very grand and poetic. Though there is something to be said for last confessions and hopeless loves.”

He didn’t see Crowley’s face but heard a strangled noise from his side of the room, which was nearly as satisfying. 

“You never said anything,” Crowley began accusingly once he had found his voice in the dark corner it had scurried off to and beaten it into submission. 

“My dear, I’m an angel. We’re beings of love. It’s what we do. I recognise it when it’s being pointed at me.”

“Aziraphale, I swear to... to... whatever’s left that cares and is listening that this had better not be some eleventh hour shit about getting me to ‘own my feelings’ and ‘confess for the good of my soul’ or some other crock of-”

“Shut up, Crowley, for Heaven’s sake. You’re not angry at me and I don’t want to spend my last hours with you being sarcastic at me. You can be furious later. When we’re dead.”

The last point brought Crowley up short. He took a deep breath and slunk cautiously towards the desk and the throne. 

“You’ve spent an eternity saying nothing, angel. Not sure why you want to drag this out of me now.”

Aziraphale leaned forward earnestly, his hands curling around the arms of the chair in a way that was making Crowley’s heart do terrible things to his blood pressure. “Angels are beings of love,” he started again. 

“Can’t see Sandalphon as a being of love. Or Gabriel, the wanker,” Crowley muttered, waving his hands at the ‘being of love’ and drawing it out in a singsong voice. 

“Regardless,” Aziraphale pressed on with an edge to his voice that suggested that this particular being of love was running short on benevolent patience, “we love things. It’s what we do. It’s the sea that we swim in and the air that we breathe. And we’re supposed to love humans. I _know_ we are. It’s our _job_. Perhaps some of us have become a little more prideful than we should. Got a little carried away with our own ideas.”

“Aziraphale, they’re going to kill you. They haven’t been a bit mischievous and need a moment of quiet reflection on the naughty step. They deserve to fall and fall _hard_!”

“They have a... what’s the phrase they use down here for the echo chamber thing?”

“Bubble.”

“Yes! They’re in a bubble. They only hear each other. They need to get down here and be with the humans and understand! Grace comes from _them_. It isn’t an unsullied thing in the vaults. It’s here in the mud and the mess of being human and... You know, I think if I just went up there and had a word, I could clear this whole thing up.” Aziraphale tilted his head thoughtfully, almost taken enough with the idea to give it a go. 

Crowley’s hand on his arm brought him back to their own particular reality. The reality that he could talk until he was utterly spent and no one was going to listen. Except Crowley. 

“You tried that, remember?” The demon’s voice was soft but tinged through with exasperation. 

“Oh. Yes. They’ve forgotten what love is. But they knew once.”

“I really hope this is leading somewhere, angel, because you’re killing me. And I’m hoping Hell manage to find a less painful method than the one you’re going with.” He folded his arms, then abruptly unfolded them again, trying to find a way to look effortlessly louche and carefree. It was not an easy task without the chair. Or rather, it was not an easy task with the chair occupied by Aziraphale looking like the benevolent deity of tea cups and custard creams, throwing around hideous words like ‘love’. 

Aziraphale cleared his throat. “It’s a long way of saying that I haven’t been sure that I loved you the way you would want me to. And it’s taken me a long while to get here and I am sorry, my dear. I truly am. I feel love all the time. For everything. And for you. Since the beginning.”

“I love you like you’re the only light in a hideous universe and you were always going to love me the only way angels can love. Don’t you dare pity me, you condescending idiot.” Crowley said in a flat monotone, perching on the edge of the desk and collapsing like every string to his body had been cut. 

There was a moment of absolute light in Aziraphale’s face that was blinding. “Oh _Crowley_.”

“I’m calling Beelzebub to take me to the Pit. It’s got to be less painful than this,” he muttered.

“Dear heart, I haven’t been sure and now I am. You can call Beelzebub if you want to or we can put our heads together and find a way to not die so that I can spend some time actually telling you.”

Crowley looked blankly at him. 

“I love you.” He put a hand on Crowley’s knee comfortingly because the demon appeared to be utterly traumatised by the confession. 

Crowley stared at the hand for a long time. He patted it cautiously as though either of them might explode at any given moment. When the sky refrained from falling on his head, he carefully took Aziraphale’s hand in his own and twisted their fingers together. He shot the angel a sideways glance and the sheer sunniness of the smile worked its unfailing magic, thankfully without the aid of a deck of cards and a fluffy bunny. Crowley sighed. 

“You’re just enough of a bastard to know and not tell me that you know and to finally show your hand now, when I know that we’re going to die and _I can’t stop it._ Fine. Fine then. At least we can die with the full horror and suffering of being in love.”

Aziraphale pulled him gently down into his lap, which was not easy because Crowley appeared to be composed almost entirely of right angles, and wrapped his arms around him with the same happy little sigh that he usually reserved for the very finest offerings of the patisserie chef. 

“I’m glad you’re enjoying this,” Crowley mumbled, burying his face in the angel’s neck and pretending very hard that he hadn’t wanted to be here for a very long time. 

“And I suppose you’re not?”

There was silence from the crook of his neck. 

“It’s a very human thing isn’t it? Love. Divine and human at the same time. And that’s one thing we’ve always had in common. Liking human things.”

“Mmm.” Crowley roused himself. He pulled back enough to watch him speak. He was starting to have very definite thoughts about the angel’s mouth and what he might like to do with it, though he wasn’t sure if Aziraphale was ready for that. It might take another apocalypse. 

Aziraphale looked brightly at him, annoyingly at ease with the sudden shift in their dynamic (or at least the acknowledgment of it). He was absently running his fingers up and down Crowley’s back in a way that was both maddening and soothing. “What if it’s all part of the ineffable plan? The apocalypse that wasn’t and whatever we’ve become. The aethereal and the profane? The human and the divine?” 

“The ineffable plan can go fuck itself.” Crowley decided that if he had to listen to the angel continue to spout terrible philosophy then Aziraphale could stand the discomfort of one kiss. Discomfort very quickly proved to be the wrong word if the hand that wound into his hair and the mouth that opened enthusiastically under his were anything to go by. Finding a way to stop proved more difficult than either of them had imagined. 

They broke apart and Crowley cleared his throat. “What do you think?”

“It’s nice enough. The humans certainly seem to enjoy it, don’t they? Maybe we need more practise. You know, really _study_ it. I wonder if there’s a book…” 

“There might be books,” the demon said nonchalantly, definitely not letting on that, in fact, there were books. He _knew_ there were books and indeed, videos, and he certainly had never read or viewed anything on the matter or attempted to practise on the inside of his arm while thinking about angels of his acquaintance because that is something that he, Crowley, would never do. Or at least own up to. 

“It would be nice, wouldn’t it? To have _time_. To be able to do human things. Together. Without all the trappings of heaven and hell getting in the way.” It was wistful and sad and the fatalistic tinge to it made Crowley’s teeth itch.

“There’s got to be a way out of this,” he muttered. The only thing irritating him more than the predicament was the powerful motivating effect the angel seemed to have on him. It wasn’t a new thing but he had always thought Aziraphale was oblivious to it. He was rapidly reassessing that thought in light of recent facts. “We can’t give up now.” 

“That’s another human thing, you know. Not giving up in the face of overwhelming and hopeless odds. They’re swine for it. Show them an overwhelming odd and they just throw themselves at it.”

“Makes us a little bit human then. If only we were just human enough that the holy water and hellfire didn’t work.” Crowley blinked. “Ah! Ahhh!” He waved a finger in Aziraphale’s face and jumped to his feet, hopping wildly around the throne. “Ahhh!” he shouted again, like a madman with a loaded finger. 

“Do you want to be clever on your own or would you like to share?” Aziraphale folded his hands neatly across his stomach and waited with all the patience of a GP’s receptionist (Crowley had got a commendation for those). 

“Not human! Not human _enough_ but... here’s an idea…”   



End file.
